


Sweet Comfort

by cordeliadelayne



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 13:17:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4264644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordeliadelayne/pseuds/cordeliadelayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prentiss and Rossi deal with the aftermath of a difficult case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Comfort

**Author's Note:**

  * For [severity_softly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/severity_softly/gifts).



> Written for severity_softly who gave the prompt “desperate measures”. Originally posted to Livejournal in 2009.

Prentiss curled her legs underneath her and picked up her paperback. Then she put it down again. And then picked it up again, where it still continued to rest uselessly in her hand five minutes later. Too many thoughts for her to concentrate on anything but what had happened, what she’d _done_. What she hadn’t.

“Are you okay?” Rossi asked, voice gruffer than usual.

Prentiss looked up and shrugged before finally pushing her book away. “I’m fine.”

Rossi ignored the lie and came to sit next to her.

“There wasn’t anything else you could have done,” he told her. Prentiss turned to look out the plane’s window, her silence saying more than words could have done. “If you hadn’t taken the shot, JJ would be dead right now.”

“I know,” Prentiss whispered, when it was clear that Rossi was just going to stare at her until she responded in some way. “I know I did the right thing.” She looked over to where JJ was trying to sleep, bandage on her neck where her assailant had tried to slit her throat a stark reminder of how close the team had come to losing her.

“But?”

“She was _pregnant._ ”

Prentiss looked over at him briefly and then turned away, eyes scanning the rest of the team as they sat and read or just sank back in their seats and tried to sleep.

Rossi shifted the folder in his hand and used it to hide the fact that he then reached over and held Prentiss’ hand in his own. He suspected he wasn’t fooling anyone, especially as Morgan, who had been walking toward them, suddenly veered off to sit next to Reid. But he and Prentiss liked to maintain the illusion that they weren’t, possibly, involved in something here.

It made things easier, and he had to admit, if only to himself, that they made things a little more exciting too. Pretending without actually having to lie about anything.

“Madeline Harper made her own choices. Whatever abuses she suffered,” he added, raising his voice slightly so that Prentiss couldn’t interrupt, “she refused to take responsibility for her own role.”

“She was desperate,” Prentiss said with a helpless shrug. “We’ve all been there.”

“But we didn’t all respond by killing five innocent women and taking an FBI agent hostage.” He squeezed her hand tightly, and shifted as close to her as he reasonably could. “That she chose to take lives rather than protect that of her unborn child is in no way your fault.”

“That they’re both dead is mine, though.”

Rossi sighed. He knew that this would take more than the short flight back to Quantico to sort out; dating, or whatever it was they were doing, another Profiler, could be a perilous endeavour. They always knew what you meant when you didn’t say anything, the subtlest movement could betray your real feelings in a way that was totally unexpected.

It also made him want to work harder at his relationships, invest in them more.

So when Prentiss rested her head on his shoulder he knew what that meant about her giving him permission to look after her, about her needing to lose control, just once. And he didn’t say anything, just gently brushed her hair away from her face and pretended that no one else was on the plane.

####

Rossi took Prentiss straight home from the airport, and everyone else pretended that he was just giving her a lift before heading back to the office. They knew they wouldn’t be seeing either of them until after the weekend.

Prentiss had half-heartedly told him that she didn’t need him to come in with her, but he ignored her.

“Are you feeling hungry? I could whip up something -” He stuck his head into the fridge, searching for anything that he could put together, though he wasn’t really having much luck.

“No. And besides, I don’t think I have any food in there.”

Rossi pulled out some greying cheese and a salad that looked like it had seen better days. “Take-out?” he asked as he threw the food into the trashcan and washed his hands, wanting to get the grime off of them.

Prentiss shook her head. “I’m not really hungry.” Her eyes drifted over to the bottle of whiskey on the counter.

“Night-cap?” Rossi suggested.

“I – no. I think I’ll just head to bed.”

Rossi nodded. “Of course. You don’t mind if I -?”

Prentiss smiled softly. “No. Help yourself.”

She kicked off her shoes and padded into her bedroom, Rossi’s eyes following her until she shut the door. He slowly removed his own shoes and then poured himself a glass.

He took a sip and then settled on to the couch. This, whatever it was, that he and Prentiss were going through, trying out…he really had no idea how these things worked anymore. But it was new. And fragile.

Precious in a way he didn’t think any of his previous relationships had been. Certainly none of the ones that had ended up in marriage.

Maybe that’s the real reason why so many of them had disintegrated, maybe none of them had had that spark he had with Prentiss, that wish to be with them above everything else and still not feel like he was losing out on anything. He took a sip of his drink, his nerves on edge.

The creak of the door made Rossi look up sharply, leaning forward slightly, getting ready to stand up in case Prentiss needed anything. She was standing in the doorway in just a long T-shirt that barely covered her assets.

“That couch isn’t very comfortable,” she said, pulling slightly at the hem of the T-shirt. “And I could do with some company.”

Rossi slowly put his glass on the coffee table and stood up. “You could?”

“Yeah.”

Rossi walked over to her and gently took her hand before letting her lead him into her bedroom.

“Well okay then,” he whispered into the dark. “I can do that.”


End file.
